Summer in China

May 17
As I get ready to leave Shanghai, this seems like a good time to take stock. I’m sitting at the top of a long set of stairs in the Shanghai Railway Station. It’s a lot like an airport. I entered and went through an x-ray scanner and then up a long escalator. There, at the top are a half dozen police officers, checking tickets and selecting a lot of people for detailed document scrutiny. I was really early for my train because I just can’t seem to figure out my tickets. At any rate, I couldn’t go through because my train’s boarding platform hadn’t been listed, so I waited at the top of the stairs and watched. It was interesting trying to guess who would be chosen for extra attention by the police. The “victims” seemed to fall into two groups: the dark skinned guys in ill-fitting clothes (migrant workers???) and the hip young people (guys with fringed hair – and who wouldn’t want to harass them – and girls in slinky outfits). No one seemed to get taken away, but their documents were given a good going over and all of their details were written down.

Unfortunately, Shanghai reminded me a lot of Seoul – and not in a good way. The air pollution is eye-stinging and throat-burning. I don’t think I could live there for long and I was really looking forward to getting into the mountains.

Most people in Shanghai seemed pleasant and helpful in dealing with me, but the vast majority of people on the street look dour and stressed – again reminding me of Seoul. The big difference here is that people don’t jostle you and they do seem to see you and step aside to avoid you. This was a pleasant surprise.

The city, like so many others, is an interesting mix of old and new buildings. Shanghai’s Bund has some very impressive and beautiful old buildings as well as some weird and quite beautiful new architecture. It actually blends together quite well. There are a number of neighborhoods that have been given heritage status and are being protected and fixed up. Bravo.

Unfortunately, there is one area in the Bund, one street off the main riverfront street that is clearly being gentrified – and I say that in the most negative way. A number of real-estate companies were showing homes to incredibly well-dressed westerners and Chinese. That was actually kind of depressing. I’m pretty sure that all of the original inhabitants were shifted out of the area and I’m pretty sure that none of them could afford to live in the new homes. This happens in every big city, including Vancouver, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Not surprisingly, there is no Facebook or Blogspot. It’s not a big deal. I’m not even sure I want to continue with Facebook anyway because of privacy issues.

May 18
I’m up after a restless night in a sleeper car. The night was constantly broken by noisy children. At any rate, I woke up to bright daylight at 6am. I had breakfast: a hard-boiled egg, a plain bun, some sour vegetable, a handful of peanuts, and a bowl of rice porridge (jook). I am pleasantly full.

It’s hard to get angry at children who cry and run around making a lot of noise, but it is tiring. The berth next to mine had two children who cried (sometimes together and sometimes solo) for 20 hours and the woman in the bunk below mine talked to her precocious child through most of the evening. I have nothing but sympathy for these parents. Some children don’t travel well (I’m pretty sure that my own mother would agree with that.), and I’m sure that most parents just don’t know what to do to quiet their children. However, every plane, train, and bus that I’ve taken in the last 20 years has had a number of noisy children. I’d be willing to pay a good deal extra for an adult-only train, plane, or bus.

May 19
The long train ride from Shanghai traveled on flat land for 15 hours and I was becoming concerned. I was supposed to be in the mountains. However, the train finally headed into the foothills and climbed to Wudang Station town for the next 6 hours. I was met at the station, as promised, by someone from the academy. Because the Wudang Special Administrative Region closes in the evening I had to stay overnight in a rather uninspiring 2-star hotel. The young woman, Coco, who met me with a driver from the hotel and they dropped me off and arranged to meet me the next morning and take me to the academy. We didn’t get very far by car because vehicle traffic was restricted during the visit of Deng Xiaoping’s daughter’s visit. We went by tourist bus to the Purple Heaven Temple, of which my school is a part. The dormitory is a short walk from the temple. The room is reasonably neat and comfortable. I have had reservations about being here, but I met a number of foreigners who were here studying, and they have inspired me.

The temple and academy are set in some beautiful mountains. This first evening, the overcast sky cleared and the moon and stars are dazzling. There are no lessons tomorrow, so I will probably go for a long walk.

May 20
I woke up early and walked about 3 and a half kms up the road from the academy to Nan Yan, a town at the end of the road. I walked around a number of temples and took a lot of pictures. Many of the sites were crowded with loud, silly tourists, but it was an enjoyable day and the morning weather was great. The afternoon clouded over and it started to drizzle.

May 21
This was the first day that there was supposed to be training, but, because it was raining, nothing really started until 8:30 am. We had a lecture on Taoism that was disjointed and hard to follow. After lunch, the tables in the cafeteria were pushed to one side and I got my first introduction to taiji. I spent two hours doing taiji walking and holding a leg forward as though in a kick. It seems pretty simple but it was a good introduction and I’m sure my legs are going to hurt tomorrow – and probably for the next month.

It’s still raining hard and the forecast is for rain for a couple of days. There was a lot of grumbling about the fact that there was no place to practice. Fortunately, they decided to use the cafeteria and the walkways around the courtyard for people to practice, the mood has improved.

I’ve lost track of the days. So, this will just be a jumble of stuff as I think of it. The room that I was put in when I first arrived was under a staircase, facing the rock wall of the mountain which was about a meter away – not much of a view. Because it was raining, water was running down the rock wall. That might have added to the fact that after two days in the room, the entire floor was not just damp – it was wet. The internet in the room didn’t work, so I was glad to be shifted to another room. I am much more comfortable now than before.

The school used to have an indoor training area (it still says so on their website), but a few weeks before I arrived, the government/local authorities confiscated the building and forced the school to move so that a hotel could be put up on the original location. The student housing area we are in does not have an indoor training area, although we move the tables to the side in the cafeteria and use the meditation room upstairs as well as the walkways around the courtyard of the student housing area. Although not ideal, it is better than nothing.

Tomorrow, I will have been here for four and a half weeks. We train five and a half days per week. Most mornings we start off at 8:30am with an hour of kicking, which I rather enjoyed until the kicks that created a turning motion on my knee started to cause me knee problems which then interfered with my taiji lessons. Now I just stretch and review the form I am learning (the straight kicks don’t seem to be a problem so I may just do some kicking on my own). The form that I have “learned” is the Wudang Taiji 18-form. It took about two and a half weeks to learn all of the moves. When I do it fairly slowly from beginning to end, it takes about 4 minutes. It really seems like it should take longer. I know the basic moves fairly well now, but it will take a long time before all of the moves feel natural. I have little hitches from one move to the next and my rhythm is sometimes uneven. If I keep on doing it every day, I hope that I will be okay in a year or two.

There are 10 to 15 foreign students and an equal number of Chinese students studying here at any given time. The foreign students are from Norway, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and a few other places. There is a core group that has been here for quite a few months. They still remember when there was snow on the ground and the rooms were like iceboxes (no heaters).

Originally, when I decided to come here, I was expecting to have some serious Taoism lessons and some Chinese classes. Those have ranged from sporadic to non-existent. Fortunately, a lot of the guys here have books, DVDs, and other material that is shared around. We do a lot of independent study. I have the Fluenz Mandarin software to work on my Mandarin, and I have some stuff I am working on for work next fall. I also have a lot of audio material from John Kabat-Zinn (mindfulness meditation) and Eckhart Tolled to work on my meditation and adjust my attitude. So, while some things are not as advertised, I have enough material to work on and enough free time to work on it.

Life here is kind of like summer camp. We have a fairly regimented routine and we tend to be pretty scruffy – unshaven and using the smell test to see whether we can get another day or two out our clothes. I’m already a little tired of washing my clothes in my bathroom sink. The food is plentiful and fairly good. I’ve also gotten into the habit of going down the mountain into town on Wednesday afternoons to buy yoghurt, nuts, and fruit just to make sure my diet is reasonably complete.

I’m learning a whole new way of moving. The circular motions of the taiji are beginning to feel a little more comfortable. The hour of taiji walking that we do in the afternoon is starting to feel relaxing – although that’s still going to take a lot of walking.

The one thing that I would like is better explanations of what to be thinking as I do movements or what I should be focusing on when I am doing standing meditation. The instructors don’t speak much English, so I can see the physical part but I’m missing out on a very important part of taiji by not understanding the flow of energy and how to develop it. The foreign guys I practice with are quite helpful, but I would like to hear it from the top guys.

I have 6 more weeks to go starting tomorrow. I know that the 18-form that I have been learning is not perfect, but I’m really hoping that the master will let me learn a new form. If I don’t start it tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to learn another one before I leave. I’m really hoping that I can start on an old form called the 13-form. I’ll have to see. I don’t feel comfortable demanding that I move on to another form.